The funding from this grant will be used to support US graduate students attending the 2013 International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy (ICOLS), which will be held in Berkeley, CA during the week of June 9-14, 2013. This international meeting is the 21st in a series of biennial conferences at which the world-wide community of atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physicists gather to present and discuss the cutting edge work from this broad, vibrant research field. The conference is prestigious and well attended by the luminaries of AMO physics (including several Nobel Laureates) and also by the latest rising stars. The meeting centers around plenary invited talks and several poster sessions, and spans the forefront fields of AMO science including ultrafast optics, ultracold atomic gases, precision tests of fundamental physics, molecular spectroscopy, quantum information, many-body quantum physics, cavity optomechanics, and others.
The conference is particularly valuable for young scientists -- graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The gathering is typically smaller than the other central meetings of the field, such as the APS DAMOP annual meeting and the International Conference on Atomic Physics. As such, rising scientists have greater access to the most influential scientists in the field, giving them a chance to learn, to discuss physics at a high level, and to establish relationships to further their scientific careers. This year's ICOLS also gives students and postdocs access to the premier scientific institutions in the Bay Area, particularly the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, both of whom are sponsoring receptions and open houses in coordination with the meeting. NSF support of this meeting is thus a strong contribution to graduate student and postdoctoral training, and also a strong contribution to the advancement of AMO physics in the United States and worldwide.
This grant was used to support the participation of US doctoral students in the International Conference of Laser Spectroscopy (ICOLS), which was held in June 2013 in Berkeley, California. This conference is a high-level, international gathering of the atomic and optical physics communities. The meeting featured talks by leading-edge scientists, including several Nobel prize winners, who described advances such as the optical frequency comb and its applications, new platforms for nonlinear quantum optics, and many-body quantum systems constructed using cold atoms and ions. The meeting was a resounding success. The attendance level at the meeting -- around 350 participants -- was unprecedented, expressing the growing interest in this research field. The meeting's success can also be ascribed to the effective outreach efforts, which were coordinated by a professional event planner. Through these efforts, we brought in a large number of young faculty members from the US and abroad, and also a large contingent of graduate students. The graduate students were attracted not only by the quality of the meeting, and the opportunities it afforded for education and networking, but also by the discounted registration cost we were able to offer through the support of this NSF grant. The tangible outcome of this award is the successful ICOLS meeting and the deep participation of students at that meeting. The intangible outcome is the impact on the scientific careers of the graduate student participants. These participants learned about new areas of science, made professional connections that lead to postdoctoral or other positions, talked with the exhibitors of scientific equipment and thus discovered new solutions to problems facing them in their laboratory work, and, more generally, broadened their perspective on science.
